


Rub-a-Dub

by Schwoozie



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, F/M, Underwear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 08:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1771942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ve been trying to be polite about it, but… you stink, Daryl.” Beth wants a bath. Daryl gives her a hard time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rub-a-Dub

**Author's Note:**

> Set between Still and Alone.

Now that they’ve lost the urgency of the prison escape and have nowhere in particular to be, they’ve been slowing down, taking the hottest parts of each day as a time to collect themselves. Daryl’s currently seated cross-legged on the ground, trying to mend an arrow that broke when he yanked it out of a walker’s temple.

It’s been two weeks since the prison fell, and Beth’s had just about enough.

“Daryl,” she says, standing over him. He quirks his eyebrows, but gives no other indication that he’s heard her.

“ _Daryl_ ,” she repeats, louder, nudging his knee with her foot. He looks up, unimpressed.

“ _What_?” he says, in the same tone, popping his lips at the end of it, and of course Beth had to get stuck with the five-year-old.

She takes a deep breath. “I’ve been trying to be polite about it, but… you stink, Daryl.”

Both his eyebrows are up now, the arrow hanging limp in his hands. “Yeah, so?”

Beth rolls her eyes. “ _So_ , it looks like we’re gonna be living in pretty close quarters for a while now, and I’d rather not gag ever time you raise your arms, thank you very much.” He looks about to do it, too, before she glares him down. “Daryl. I want a bath.”

He gestures down the hill, towards the stream where they had refilled their water. “Go on, then.”

“You ain’t gonna look out for me?”

He shifts in his seat, glancing over her left shoulder. “I can hear fine from here.”

Beth rolls her eyes again. “That’s a great comfort. Common, please,” she says, biting her lip. “I’ll carry your pack for you.”

Her furrows his brow, then grunts, hoisting himself to his feet. “Ain’t gotta do that,” he grumbles, leaning down to snatch up his bow.

“Well,” he asks, jerking his chin, “we going?”

“Now?”

“Well, I  _assumed_.” It isn’t until she notices the quirk of his mouth that she realizes Daryl is being… playful. Daryl Dixon is being playful. Who’d’a thought?

“A’right. Good.” Beth quickly gathers their sparse belongings. By the time she makes it down the hill, Daryl is leaning back against a tree, long legs crossed in front of him at the ankles, arms tight and bursting out of his sleeveless shirt.

He nods at the water. “In ya go then.”

Beth pauses, looking between him and the water. “You… you’re gonna watch?”

Daryl snorts. “Wanted a lookout, didn’t you?” When Beth still hesitates, he sighs roughly and throws her his crossbow. She has to drop her bags to grab it out of the air, stumbling beneath its weight. By the time she’s looked up again, his shirt is off and his jeans halfway unzipped.

“What’re you doing?” Beth asks in a voice that absolutely does not have an edge of panic.

He looks at her with a crooked smirk. “Takin’ a bath.” Then his jeans are off, and he’s wading into the stream in nothing but his boxer shorts.

Beth swallows and turns her back, hefting the bow and thankful Daryl’d had the presence of mind to load it for her. She hears a few grunts as he adjusts to the icy water, then the sound of splashing and the hiss of skin on skin as he rubs himself down.

“Common, Beth,” she whispers to herself, trying not to dwell on how hard his stomach and thighs had looked. “Keep it together. You’ve been around naked men tons of times.” Of course, that’s not entirely true. She vaguely remembers being a baby and taking baths with Shawn, and a few times at the prison she’d showered while one man or another had been in another stall. She hadn’t thought much of it, at the time; at least she was getting clean, and she always brought her clothes in with her. Besides, she trusted all of them not to take a peak.

And the thing is, she trusts Daryl too. Trusts him more than most of them, truth be told. So why is her stomach flopping like she’s the one standing there naked?

“It’d go faster if we were both in at once,” he calls. She glances behind her. The stream goes to high-abdomen height on him; he’d clearly dunked under a few times, for his hair is wet and hanging in his eyes like a lost puppy’s. He isn’t looking at her like a puppy, though; he’s looking at her like he did when he told her she’d never get good at the crossbow without some pushups; like he did when she asked him to reach a high shelf for her, and he just smirked and stood aside. It’s a challenge, and it sends shivers all the way to her toes.

“What about walkers?” she asks.

“We’ll hear ‘em in plenty of time.” He crouches down so the water takes most of his weight, and tosses the hair out of his eyes. “Don’t be a pussy, Greene.”

Beth stares at him for a few moments in open-mouthed shock, before harrumphing and setting the crossbow down on a near-by rock. Glaring right at him, she begins to unbutton her blouse.

She isn’t half-way done by the time he starts getting squirrely, glancing down at the water and running his hands through his hair a few times. He doesn’t turn away, though, and in a minute she’s standing naked but for bra and panties, shivering less from the Georgia heat than from the chance of his gaze.

He never looks up, though, just says, “Hurry up, ‘fore we get interrupted.”

Something about his phrasing makes Beth’s heart race, and she hurries down the bank into the water, hardly minding the cold as she sinks into its obscuring embrace. Daryl hasn’t moved much since she entered, simply crouching where he is, swaying with the current. Beth stares at him a moment before turning her back and proceeding to get clean.

“We should’a thought to find soap or something,” she says, desperately searching for a neutral topic to discharge the weird tension. “Maybe next time—“

“Something this dumb’ll only work once,” Daryl snaps. She furrows her brow, and turns when she hears splashing. He’s stood up fully and is halfway to the bank when she catches him.

“Hey, Daryl, wait,” she says, bounding forward to get through the water and grabbing his wrist. The water’s waist high on him, up to the belly-button on her, but he doesn’t look down at her sopping white bra, so she has no need to blush. “What’s goin’ on with you?” she asks.

He shifts where he stands, but doesn’t pull his arm away. “I shouldn’t be listening to you,” he says, but without malice. He just sounds confused. “Burnin’ the shack, going swimming in the fucking woods… I’m gonna get us killed soon ‘nough.”

“They’re my ideas,” Beth says quietly. “Maybe I’ll just keep my mouth shut, huh?”

“Nah, they’re, they’re good,” Daryl says, looking at her earnestly. “Real good. Just dumb. Y’know?”

“Yeah, I do,” Beth says, smiling sheepishly.

He smiles back at her. “Been a long time since I took a bath with a girl, too.”

“Wish you could enjoy it more. I know I ain’t much to look at—

“No, you—“ and then he stops abruptly, turning the brightest shade of red Beth’s ever seen him. She feels something warm spread through her belly.

She looks at him carefully, a gleeful smile spreading across her face. “You think I’m pretty, Daryl Dixon?”

“No,” he says gruffly. He pulls out of her hold and stomps up the bank. She allows herself a moment, just a moment, to observe the way the worn cotton clings to his backside.

He’s dressed and holding her clothes out to her when she herself emerges.

“Thanks,” she says softly. He meets her eyes and then, in a breathtaking moment, sweeps his eyes up and down her body. He blinks at her, once, twice, then turns back up the hill.

“I’m gonna get some lunch goin’. Holler if you get eaten.”

“A’right. I’ll be just a hot sec.” Beth shimmies into her jeans and buttons her blouse, relishing the feel of the cotton on her clean, drying skin.

She pauses when she reaches the last few, and with a small smile, leaves them open.

“Daryl Dixon thinks I’m pretty,” she declares to the empty air. She nods to herself, hands on her hips; then makes her way up the hill to join him.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "water"


End file.
